The units, modeled after the Street Crime Citywide Anti-Gang Enforcement Unit (CAGE), will target areas where gang activity is high.
Cops assigned to the units will be trained to identify gang members, symbols, hand signals and other aspects of gang culture.
To assist the new units, gang investigative squads will also be created in each borough.
These squads, consisting of a sergeant and six detectives, will investigate gang crimes like robberies and slashings.
"It is very important to quash these gangs in their earliest stages," Police Commissioner Howard Safir said in making the announcement.
"We are focusing our efforts in high gang-activity areas and in and around schools to protect and prevent our young people from falling prey to criminals."
Safir said that since July, there have been 206 gang-related incidents in the city, and 702 gang members have been arrested.
During the same period, there also have been 39 gang slashings - with 32 attributed to the notorious Bloods.
Safir's announcement came as Mayor Giuliani stumped for his new anti-gang initiative, which would give cops the same tools to attack gangs that federal agents used to crack down on the mob.
"These are not youth criminals," the mayor said. "These are hardened criminals who have violent criminal records. Sometimes they're murderers."
Meanwhile, 35 members of the Latin Kings gang led an immigrant-rights march through Manhattan.
The 800 demonstrators marched from Columbus Circle to the U.N., chanting, "No justice, no peace."
Latin Kings leader Antonio "King Tone" Fernandez said the gang took part because many of its members' parents are from the Caribbean or Third World countries "and they are fighting for the right to stay in America."
In Brooklyn, community leaders rallied against gangs at the Albany Houses project in Crown Heights, a base for the Bloods.
Tashanna Davis, 9, said she hates the project.
"I saw this girl with burns on her legs from cigarettes," she said, adding it was a gang-initiation rite.
FIVE NEW COP UNITS FOR WAR ON GANGS
By ANDY GELLER
November 25, 1997
The NYPD announced yesterday that it is creating gang-suppression units in each of the five boroughs as part of its new strategy to fight gangs.